Individual effort is not futile as each one of us, collectively, makes up the people of this world. A person by himself may seem to be insignificant to the other larger global efforts going on. However, we should not forget that people are able to influence others; a single effort may gradually evolve into a larger scale project as more people participate actively.

A story goes of a man picking up starfishes stranded on the beach and throwing them back to the sea. While the act may seem futile since there are thousands of other starfish stranded on other beaches, the man stated simply that he had made a difference to each starfish that he saved. In the same way, we can apply this to the environment. Our actions make be minor, but each conservative or recycling action we take, we reduced the impact of Man's negative action on the environment.